On Friday, 15th June 2018 Ericsson, a multinational networking, and telecommunication company ranked Nigeria 4th among the top 5 nations in highest net mobile subscriptions.

Ericsson announced this news on its website. In the first quarter of 2018, Nigeria had 3 million subscriptions. China ranked first with 53 million subscriptions followed by India with 16 million subscriptions, Indonesia with 6 million subscriptions and Bangladesh with 2 million subscriptions ranked 5th.

A recent report by Ericsson mobility report states that in the next five years, the global mobile subscription is going to be as many as 8.9 billion, which is around 95% of all subscriptions. Along with the growth of mobile subscriptions, we would also see a rise in online gaming, including online sports betting in Nigeria, something we are sure you should be excited about.

In the first quarter of 2018, 98 million new subscriptions am from China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Bangladesh leading the game.

The number of mobile subscriptions exceeds the population in many countries, which is due to inactive subscriptions, multiple handset/device ownership or optimization of mobile subscriptions for different types of calling plans.

The mobile subscriptions increased by 4% y-oy, reaching 7.9 mobile subscriptions in Q1 of 2018. The report also said that the increase in mobile subscriptions is due to the affordable price of the handsets. The Middle East and Africa, combined had 20% mobile subscriptions for LTE and the Sub Saharan region had 5% of LTE.

Reasons behind this growing mobile subscriptions;

The demographic shift has influenced the demand of the consumers and has made them feel the need to be tech-savvy.

With the new entry of other mobile companies in the market, has caused the other companies to reduce the price of their manufactured handsets to increase demand for their product.

By 2021 5G subscriptions are projected to increase, driven by the fall in the price of the mobile phones by different handset manufacturers.

Traffic growth is driven both by the rising number of smartphone subscriptions and increasing average data volume per subscription, fueled primarily by more viewing of video content at increasingly higher resolutions.

The first smartphones with 5G in the mid bands are said to be in the market within the initial months of 2019 and smartphones with the capabilities of supporting high spectrum bands during the first 6 months of 2019. Mobile operators in the USA will be the first to launch 5G commercial services. South Korea, Japan, and China will soon launch 5G commercial service. By 2023, one billion 5G handsets for improved broadband are expected to connect worldwide.